The African Queen (1951) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC In Africa during World War I, a gin-swilling riverboat captain is persuaded by a strait-laced missionary to use his boat to attack an enemy warship. Director: C.S. Forester (novel), James Agee (adapted for the screen by) | 1 more credit » Stars: a list of 42 titles created 10 Sep 2012 a list of 23 titles created 15 Aug 2013 a list of 25 images created 23 Aug 2014 a list of 32 titles created 26 Apr 2015 a list of 49 titles created 1 month ago Title: The African Queen (1951) 7.9/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.

You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 1 Oscar. Another 2 wins & 9 nominations. See more awards » Videos When a rich woman's ex-husband and a tabloid-type reporter turn up just before her planned remarriage, she begins to learn the truth about herself. Director: George Cukor A man visits his old friend's hotel and finds a gangster running things. As a hurricane approaches, the two end up confronting each other. Director: John Huston Fred Dobbs and Bob Curtin, two Americans searching for work in Mexico, convince an old prospector to help them mine for gold in the Sierra Madre Mountains. Director: John Huston Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a rich family. Before the complex case is over, he's seen murder, blackmail, and what might be love. Director: Howard Hawks A private detective takes on a case that involves him with three eccentric criminals, a gorgeous liar, and their quest for a priceless statuette. Director: John Huston During World War II, American expatriate Harry Morgan helps transport a French Resistance leader and his beautiful wife to Martinique while romancing a sensuous lounge singer. Director: Howard Hawks When a U.S.

Naval captain shows signs of mental instability that jeopardizes the ship, the first officer relieves him of command and faces court martial for mutiny. Director: Edward Dmytryk A man convicted of murdering his wife escapes from prison and works with a woman to try and prove his innocence. Director: Delmer Daves A drama critic learns on his wedding day that his beloved maiden aunts are homicidal maniacs, and that insanity runs in his family. Director: Frank Capra A woman is asked to spy on a group of Nazi friends in South America. How far will she have to go to ingratiate herself with them? Director: Alfred Hitchcock A newspaper editor uses every trick in the book to keep his ace reporter ex-wife from remarrying. Director: Howard Hawks A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo and learn something about each other in the process. Director: John Ford Edit Storyline September 1914, news reaches the colony German Eastern Africa that Germany is at war, so Reverend Samuel Sayer became a hostile foreigner. German imperial troops burn down his mission; he is beaten and dies of fever.

His well-educated, snobbish sister Rose Sayer buries him and leaves by the only available transport, the dilapidated river steamboat 'African Queen' of grumpy Charlie Allnut. As if a long difficult journey without any comfort weren't bad enough for such odd companions, she is determined to find a way to do their bit for the British war effort (and avenge her brother) and aims high, as God is obviously on their side: construct their own equipment, a torpedo and the converted steamboat, to take out a huge German warship, the Louisa, which is hard to find on the giant lake and first of all to reach, in fact as daunting an expedition as anyone attempted since the late adventurous explorer John Speakes, but she presses till Charlie accepts to steam up the Ulana, about to brave... Written by KGF Vissers Did You Know? Trivia Shooting was slow going. Tempers often flared and the cast and crew faced constant dangers and difficulties including torrential rains that would close down shooting, wild animals, poisonous snakes and scorpions, crocodiles, armies of ants, water so contaminated that they couldn't even brush their teeth with it, and food that was less than appetizing.

Lauren Bacall recalled, "We decided first night out that it was advisable not to ask what we were eating, we didn't want to know." See more » Goofs When arguing about who is going to steer the torpedoes, a cigar suddenly appears in Charlie's mouth. See more » Quotes Charlie Allnut : Nothin' a man can't do if he sets his mind to it. Never say die. That's my motto! Movie Review - - ' The African Queen,' Starring Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, at the Capitol; ' Navajo' Feature at the Baronet -- 'Paris Nights,' an Import, Opens at Rialto Theatre - NYTimes.com Movie Review February 21, 1952 ' The African Queen,' Starring Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, at the Capitol; ' Navajo' Feature at the Baronet -- 'Paris Nights,' an Import, Opens at Rialto Theatre By BOSLEY CROWTHER Published: February 21, 1952 Whether C. S.

Forester had his salty British tongue in his cheek when he wrote his extravagant story of romance and adventure, "The African Queen," we wouldn't be able to tell you. But it is obvious—to us, at least—that Director John Huston was larking when he turned the novel into a film. His lively screen version of it, which came to the Capitol yesterday with Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in its two predominant roles, is a slick job of movie hoodwinking with a thoroughly implausible romance, set in a frame of wild adventure that is as whopping as its tale of off-beat love. And the main tone and character of it are in the area of the well-disguised spoof. This is not noted with disfavor. Considering the nature of the yarn, it is hard to conceive its presentation in any other way—that is in the realistic channels of the motion-picture screen. For Mr.

Forester's fable of love suddenly taking bloom in the hearts of a lady missionary and a Cockney rumpot while they're trying to escape down a German East African river in a wheezy steam-launch during World War I is so personally preposterous and socially bizarre that it would take a lot of doing to be made convincing in the cold, clear light of day. In the brilliance of Technicolor and with adventure intruding at every turn, any attempt at serious portrayal would be not only incongruous but absurd. And so Mr. Huston merits credit for putting this fantastic tale on a level of sly, polite kidding and generally keeping it there, while going about the happy business of engineering excitement and visual thrills. His lady, played by Miss Hepburn with her crisp flair for comedy, is a caricature of a prissy female in her high choke collar, linen duster and limp cloth hat. And his man, played by Mr. Bogart, is a virtual burlesque of the tropical tramp, just one cut—and that a very thin one—above the ripe meatiness of the clown.

Not since Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton appeared in a very similar picture, "The Beachcomber," several years ago, have the incongruities of social station and manners been so pointedly and humorously portrayed. "Mr. Allnut—dear—what's your first name?" the lady politely inquires of her companion the morning after she has apparently submitted to him, in what is perhaps the screen's least lustful and least likely seduction scene. "Charlie," he beams, with melting coyness. It is that anomalous and droll. Not all of it, however. Mr. Huston and his writer, James Agee, who assisted him in the preparation of the deliberately wordy script, have let the yarn slide onto the mud flats of heavy drama that Mr. Forester laid down, and while it is in that situation, they have let it become soggy in plot and mood. After running impossible rapids, eluding a German fort and keeping the romance skipping nimbly on the surface of sly absurdity, they have grounded their picture on a barrier of sudden solemnity and sanded it in with emotions that are neither buoyant nor credible.

No wonder the fantastic climax that is abruptly and sentimentally contrived appears the most fulsome melodrama, unworthy of Mr. Huston and this film. However, while it is skipping—and that is most of the time—there is rollicking fun and gentle humor in this outlandish "African Queen." There's nothing subtle or moralistic, mind you, outside of the jesting display that nature's most formidable creature is a serene and self-righteous dame. Without two accomplished players, Mr. Huston could never have achieved his highly audacious purpose of a virtually two-character film, but Miss Hepburn and Mr. Bogart are entirely up to their jobs, outside of their lack of resemblance to the nationals they're said to be. Robert Morley is briefly effective as the lady's missionary brother who conveniently dies, and Peter Bull struts and puffs for one sequence as the captain of a German gunboat on all African lake. For the rest, there is beauty and excitement in the lush and colorful scenes of a broad and forbidding African river, its foaming white rapids and falls, and the various birds and animals that live on the banks and in the stream. Mr.

Huston went right to Africa for this genuine atmosphere. While the hardships were said to be oppressive, he and his producer, S. P. Eagle, have been repaid. Their picture is doubly provided with the insurance of popularity. THE AFRICAN QUEEN, adapted for the screen by James Agee and John Huston, from the novel. "The African Queen," by C. S. Forester; directed by Mr. Huston; produced by S. P. Eagle. A Horizon-Romulus Production released by United Artists. At the Capitol. Charlie Allnut . . . . . Humphrey Bogart Rev. Samuel Sayer . . . . . Robert Morley Captain of the Louisa . . . . . Peter Bull First Officer of the Louisa . . . . . Theodore Bikel German Army Officer . . . . . Peter Swanick The African Queen (1951) Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Morley - Three Movie Buffs Review Reviewed on: December 23rd, 2001 Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen.

In 1953 director John Huston made a movie in Africa as an excuse to go on safari. It was the first color movie for Huston as well as its stars; Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. Bogie drank heavily the entire shoot. Hepburn got dysentery. If that wasn't bad enough the real star of the movie actually sank and had to be raised twice during filming. I am, of course, talking about The African Queen. Hepburn plays Rose, a spinster, British missionary working with her Minister brother in Africa during World War I. Upon the minister's death from German soldiers she hitches a ride down the river on The African Queen. It's an old steam engine with a drunk behind the wheel. The drunk is Charlie. He burps, swears, drinks and offends Rose by just being himself. "Please Miss," he begs Rose, at one point, who is pouring out his liquor. "It's natural for a man to drink." "Nature," Rose responds, "is what God put us on this Earth to rise above." They are morally opposite. But they fall in love amongst the waterfall, leeches and gunfire.

Together they attempt to sink a German ship, The Louisa, by ramming her with the African Queen carrying home made torpedoes. Bogart and Hepburn are two of the best actors and greatest movie stars of all time. Their chemistry together is phenomenal. His rough Charlie softened by her delicate Rose. Her innocent Rose made worldly by his experienced Charlie. This movie is remembered so much for the adventure aspects, yet I feel it is the love story that makes it so enduring. The scene of the morning after, when Rose realizes she just slept with a man whose name she doesn't even know is humorous as well as romantic. My favorite part is at the end when they are about to be hung and Charlie asks if the German Captain would marry them before they get executed. This film has a couple of minor flaws. The special effects when all the bugs attack is lousy and the score is sometimes overdone. Still, this is a classic among classics. The African Queen has adventure, romance and two of the most incredible movie stars Hollywood has ever seen. Did you enjoy Eric's review? +33 Reviewed on: December 23rd, 2002 Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen.

The African Queen, the movie that won Bogie an Oscar and gave Hepburn the model for nearly every character she would play for the next forty years, is one of those rare classics that is above reproach. Sure the special effects are dated; it remains a gloriously entertaining strip of celluloid. The two legends are indeed perfect together. Bogie had spent the thirties playing supporting roles at Warner Brothers, often playing second fiddle to Jimmy Cagney in several gangster pictures or to Bette Davis in one of her many melodramas from the period. It was not until 1941's The Maltese Falcon that he would 'arrive' as a full-fledged star. He would, of course, go on to make classics like Casablanca, The Big Sleep and Treasure of the Sierra Madre before taking on the role of Charlie Allnut. Hepburn, on the other hand, was an instant sensation with her first few movies, winning the first of her record four Best Actress Awards in 1933 for Morning Glory.

She would fall out of favor a few years later but come roaring back with a string of comedies costarring Cary Grant and then launch into her successful series of movies with Spencer Tracy starting in the early forties. Unlike Bette Davis (her chief rival for greatest female movie star of all time status) she rarely carried a movie on her own. At the time they made The African Queen both stars had ripened with age like a fine Port. The script brilliantly makes use of the chemistry between them by taking advantage of the dichotomy of their personalities, much like Redford and Streisand in the equally memorable The Way We Were. He is coarse and a drunkard but we know that underneath lurks a brave and honest heart. She is prim and judgmental but we know this shields a passionate and athletic personality. As Eric pointed out the differences between them compliment each other and enable each to grow into a better person. All of this is merely subtext to a fast paced, riveting action adventure. My favorite scene of the many memorable moments in this movie is when their boat gets stuck among the thick reeds. Physically exhausted and unable to tell where they are they lie down and give up.

The camera then pulls back to reveal that after everything they have been through they are only yards away from the open lake. If you don't like old movies this is the one to change your mind. If you have never seen The African Queen get ready for a cinematic treat. Did you enjoy Patrick's review? +32 Reviewed on: October 26th, 2003 Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. Patrick is correct when he says that people who aren't normally fans of old movies can enjoy The African Queen. Speaking as someone who prefers movies made in the modern era to those made pre-1970, I can say this with some surety. In fact, when I watched it again recently, the one thought that ran through my head was how timeless this story has remained. As both Eric and Patrick pointed out, the special effects are bad in points, but that's such a given that it hardly bears mentioning. What movie made in that day and age, doesn't look dated? But the adventure, the romance, and the characters are completely timeless and in some ways even modern.

How many women were the stars of an action-adventure movie in 1951, in any other way than to play the girlfriend of the hero or as someone to be rescued by the male lead. In The African Queen, Rose and Charlie are equals who both support and lead the other on in their quest to sink the Louisa. Rose does her share of the action and without ever pounding some overly stated idea of feminism. She simply is a strong character. One aspect of this movie that neither Eric nor Patrick mentioned is the comedy. There are some truly funny moments. My particular favorite is when Charlie attempts to scare Rose by taking the boat over the rapids. Instead of frightening her, she is thrilled. "I never dreamed that any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!" she says afterwards. I don't know that this movie can change your mind about enjoying older movies, since as I see it; this movie is the exception and not the rule when it comes to old movies, but without a doubt, everyone can enjoy this movie. Did you enjoy Scott's review?

+30 The African Queen | Film Review | Slant Magazine The African Queen by Matthew Connolly February 10, 2011 Star vehicles have been a part of the Hollywood assembly line practically since its inception, but few have utilized (and literalized) the concept to such beloved effect as The African Queen. Really, what is the idea behind John Huston’s 1951 adventure-romance other than putting Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn on a riverboat in Africa and see what happens? The world becomes reduced to the clanky titular ship and some passing jungle mise-en-scène, an elemental landscape in which Bogart’s worldly wisecracks and Hepburn’s clipped pronouncements can flourish beyond the captivity of ornate plot mechanics or, for the most part, other characters. Its modesty of ambition makes The African Queen among the least complex classics of Hollywood’s waning “golden age” (for a movie with a World War I setting and a colonialist context, it offers little interpretive earth to excavate), but leaves plenty of time for Huston and company to lovingly appraise the personae of two Tinseltown darlings.

The lead’s performances are undoubtedly of the star-turn variety, making little effort to conceal their trademark mannerisms. (Hepburn and Bogart are somewhat hilariously cast as British and Canadian, respectively, though barely a trace of an accent is present to cloud either her starched New England flatness or his booze-and-smokes gravel.) But they’re not resting on their laurels either. The African Queen also finds them toying around with their on-screen personalities, puffing them up with winking good humor or stripping them to their core. Bogart undoubtedly takes the former route as Charlie Allnut, the gin-guzzling captain of the African Queen. His ruddy if haggard visage covered in unkempt whiskers, Bogart’s Charlie is full of life-on-the-river debauch yet endearingly tentative, his face frequently crinkling into a look of shoulder-shrugging apology. Bogart slyly draws upon his past performances here—men of weary-eyed cynicism and faded idealism—to give Charlie’s rudderless existence an extra-textual charge.

Could this be where Rick Blaine ended up after he strolled off into the mist, or how Sam Spade ended his days when the cases stopped coming across his desk? That Bogart finds so much humor in Charlie’s goofball debasement only adds to its poignancy. Hepburn’s Rose Sayer appears less of a stretch for an actress known for her portrayals of tightly wound go-getters, and Hepburn does not defy expectations so much as fulfill them with bracing force. The buttoned-up sister of a white preacher (Robert Morley) proselytizing in Eastern Africa, Rose joins Charlie on the African Queen after an attack by German soldiers leaves the village decimated and her brother in an eventually fatal state of shock. She predictably turns up her nose at Charlie in the early-going, looking down on his drinking and slovenly demeanor and insisting upon the use of formal titles while on the ship. (The way Hepburn, in her unmistakable Yankee cadences, repeatedly calls out for “Mistah AWL-naut” becomes one of the film’s best running gags.) Her iron will, however, quickly extends beyond merely enforcing gender propriety.

Charlie, who plans on waiting out the war in a boozy stupor, casually mentions the presence of a German gunboat, the Louisa, down river. Rose’s eyes light up, and after a quick scan of the boat’s components, devises a plan: construct some makeshift torpedoes and blow up the Louisa by running the African Queen straight into the enemy vessel. Ostensibly an act of vengeance for her brother’s demise, Rose’s plan comes across more vividly as the manifestation of her almost comical indomitability. This steadfastness, in turn, feeds off Hepburn’s own reputation (on screen and off) as a no-nonsense unbreakable spirit. She sketches Rose with strokes at once broad and sharp, underlining her famed tenacity while slicing away any superfluous layers until all that remains is raw resolve. The result is a performance as sinewy and unpretentious as Hepburn’s bony figure (always thin, she dropped roughly 20 pounds after falling ill during the film’s infamously calamitous shoot).

Their voyage encounters a fairly standard-issue set of blockages, including a run-in with German snipers and three—count ‘em, three—hairy navigations through wild river rapids and unexpected waterfalls. Setting aside the inevitably dated quality of these heavily rear-projected scenes, the action sequences, while handled with old-pro professionalism by Huston, are not where the director’s heart seems to be within the material. His filmmaking eye seems much more enamored with the jungles of Uganda and Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), whose verdant foliage and golden yellows were captured with rich Technicolor by cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Their textured tones look ripe enough to pluck off the screen in the film’s painstaking new 35mm restoration, but attention must also be paid to the darker hues, which gain a striking, inky blackness in the new print. A scene that finds a grieving Rose sitting under a porch overhang midday is an arresting portrait of sorrow, the frame’s expressive use of shadow as crucial as the way Hepburn’s bereft face both refuses and threatens to become lost within it.

Huston relishes in his hard-fought location footage, even if he ultimately views it in terms of how it affects the Charlie/Rose relationship. (That being said, he cannot resist throwing in a few get-your-money’s-worth inserts of howling monkeys and slithering crocodiles.) The jungle’s character changes over the course of the film, moving from a picturesque if demanding landscape to a milieu more defined by impersonal hardships than visual opulence. Charlie and Rose pull over to the shore to spend the evening, only to get attacked by a nasty swarm of mosquitoes, their unceasing buzz dominating the soundtrack for an unnervingly long stretch. Later, they work their way through a section of the river that’s more mud than water, with Charlie pulling the boat in an image of Sisyphean hopelessness. All seems lost, and Huston lingers on a moving image of Hepburn as she offers one final prayer for their place in heaven before lying down in Bogart’s arms to die.

The African Queen is too light an entertainment for such moments to gain too much weight, but Huston understands the majestic savagery of his surroundings well enough to let it exert some dramatic pressure on what is primarily a buoyant romantic comedy. Indeed, the thought of Charlie and Rose perishing on the dirty deck of the African Queen feels at once tragic and oddly appropriate, given both how skillfully Hepburn and Charlie have shaded their burgeoning romance and how connected the couple’s Edenic bliss feels to their natural surroundings. Their romance begins not in an intimate clinch, but as the culmination of near-death experience: a narrow escape from the rapids that leads to an excited smooch. The speed with which these seemingly opposite figures fall for one another strains plausibility, offering little in the way of tangible erotic connection. (Bosley Crowther, not exactly known for his strong opinions on cinematic hanky-panky, dubbed their canoodling “perhaps the screen’s least lustful and least likely seduction scene.”) What they lack in heat, however, is more than made up in warmth.

Scene after scene showcases little more than playful banter, nuzzling, and touchingly mild breakthroughs in intimacy—no more so than the first time Rose tentatively replaces the formal “Mr. Allnut” with “dear.” What Hepburn and Bogart find in these scenes is the rich pleasures of affectionate camaraderie— the joy of unexpectedly finding one’s equal—and it has everything to do with the slippage that occurs between character and actor. We know that Bogie only had eyes for Bacall, and Kate would never dream of betraying old Spence. To see them gaze into one another’s eyes and onto one another’s bodies with such relaxation and generous humor, then, is to witness the delight of a semi-improbable and thoroughly winning collaboration. That it occurs as both stars found themselves middle-aged in a young person’s business (Bogart was in his early 50s during the shoot, while Hepburn was easing into her mid 40s) only enhances their characters’ appreciative emotional bond. Both had gone deeper before, and both still had better work ahead of them.

But to watch Charlie pretend to be a hippo so he can get a laugh out of Rose—that is, to consider how gratifying it is to watch Humphrey Bogart act like a seventh-grade class clown, and infer how delighted Katharine Hepburn seems to be while witnessing this—is to let oneself appreciate one of filmgoing’s simplest pleasures. He looks, then she looks; she laughs, then he laughs. We’re just happy to be there. Buy Humphrey Bogart - Hollywood's Golden Age Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) Humphrey Bogart Humphrey Bogart is one of the great legendary figures of Hollywood's Golden Age. During the peak of his career in the 1940's and 1950's he appeared in several classic movies and created some unforgettable characters such as Duke Mantee in 'The Petrified Forest' in 1936, Sam Spade in 'The Maltese Falcon' in 1941 and Rick Blaine in 'Casablanca' in 1942.

Initially typecast as a gangster in the 1930's, Bogart later developed and broadened his onscreen persona and became famous and popular portraying a hard-bitten cynic who is, despite himself heroic, noble and a romantic. He was nominated three times for the Best Actor Academy Award and he won it once for his unforgettable portrayal of the rough boat captain, Charlie Allnut in 'The African Queen' in 1951. In the American Film Institute's list of top males screen stars he stands at number one. Search Amazon for Humphrey Bogart Biography Humphrey Bogart was born in New York City in December, 1899, with the birth name Humphrey DeForest Bogart. The official birth date given is December 25 but there is a feeling that this may have been dreamed up for studio publicity purposes. His family were very prosperous and the chief money earner was his mother who was a well known commercial artist. His father was a surgeon and he had two younger sisters. The family divided its time between their primary residence on New York's fashionable Upper West Side and their summer estate on Canandaigua Lake in upstate New York.

He received a good education at Trinity School, NYC and then Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and was expected to follow his father into the medical profession. It is unclear whether he was expelled from the Academy or whether his father pulled him out for not working hard enough but he certainly did not graduate and in 1918 he decided to enter the US Navy. His time in the Navy was spent ferrying troops back from Europe after the Armistice. He had a lifelong love of the sea and after discharge he joined the Naval Reserve. After working for an importer and as a bond salesman he joined 'World Films' owned by a friend of his family, William S Brady. After trying his hand at most behind the scenes tasks without much success he became fascinated by the apparent glamour of the acting life and he started making regular appearances on stage. His roles at this time were all minor romantic second leads. First Marriages Bogart's first two marriages occurred at the start of his acting career. His first wife was Helen Menken, a well known actress, whom he married in 1926 but the marriage never worked out and they divorced one year later.

He married his second wife, Mary Phillips who also was an actress, in 1928 and for a while they worked on stage together. When the stock market crashed in 1929, production of stage plays fell off markedly. Bogart joined an exodus of young actors heading west to find work in Hollywood. Mary, the more established performer, stayed in New York, where she still had work. Stage and Movie Success When he arrived in Hollywood the era of Talkies was just beginning and actors with clear diction were in demand. He signed up with the Fox Corporation but his first films were not successful and his contract was cancelled. Movies for other companies also failed and in 1934 Bogart was forced to return to New York where Mary was still working as an actress. It proved the right move and he was very soon asked to test for a new type of role, that of an escaped killer, Duke Mantee, in the stage play 'The Petrified Forest'. He was given the part due in large measure to the insistence of the leading man, Leslie Howard, an English actor who was a friend of Bogart.

The play was outstandingly successful and Bogart gave a clever performance which showed his ability to play tough guy roles as well as romantic leads. In 1936 when the movie was made, Leslie Howard again insisted that Bogart play the part of Duke Mantee. The movie was also a smash hit and Bogart was given a contract with the studio, Warner Brothers. He was now a genuine Hollywood actor. Despite her husband's new success Mary refused to leave her New York theatrical base and the strain put on a divided marriage caused them to divorce in 1937. Bogart married his third wife the following year. She was another actress, Mayo Methot, a firebrand with a reputation for liking alcohol too much. The same could be said of her husband and the two soon became known as 'the Battling Bogarts'. Bogart spent a large part of his early movie career making disappointing 'B' pictures. His work was regular, over 30 movies in 4 years after 1936 but he suspected, correctly, that he was just getting the leftover gangster roles which top stars like Cagney had rejected.

Some of the movies stand out, such as 'Dead End' in 1937, 'Angels with Dirty Faces' in 1938, and 'They Drive by Night' in 1940 but he had to wait until 1941 for two parts which would propel him to superstardom. Hollywood Superstar 'High Sierra' was scripted by John Huston, who was to play a major role in the remainder of Bogart's career, and it was directed, with great intelligence, by the masterly Raoul Walsh. Bogart gave a clever portrayal of Roy "Mad Dog" Earle as a sympathetic, multi-dimensional character and the film was a critically acclaimed box-office hit. Also in 1941 came John Huston's directorial debut with 'The Maltese Falcon'. Bogart was able to project a more rounded character in the detective, Sam Spade, and he gave a more romantic side to his customary hard-man image. The movie featured a first class supporting cast including Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre who were also to feature in Bogart's next movie, 'Casablanca' the film with which he is most closely identified.

Casablanca Playing opposite Ingrid Bergman, it was Bogart's first romantic lead role, as Rick Blaine, the club owner in wartime Casablanca. His clever portrayal gave depth to the character, showing him as a romantic beneath his tough exterior. The movie was an outstanding success and has remained popular ever since. Bogart was nominated for Best Actor Oscar but lost out, to general surprise, to Paul Lukas in 'Watch on the Rhine'. Lauren Bacall Bogart was now a top box-office draw and the best paid actor in Hollywood. During the next ten years he would appear in many top quality movies and show the world his great acting ability. In 1944, whilst filming 'To Have and Have Not' he met a young model who was just setting out on her acting career. Her name was Lauren Bacall and when she and Bogart started a romance it caused fireworks both onscreen and off. Bogart was now able to end his unhappy marriage to Mayo Methot whose jealous outbursts on set had caused him great problems. Their divorce came through in May 1945 and he married Lauren Bacall just eleven days later.

For Bogart it was his first truly happy marriage and he and Bacall went on to have a happy family life. Son Stephen was born in 1949 and daughter, Leslie Howard was born in 1952. She was named after the actor who had given Bogart his break in 'The Petrified Forest' in 1934 and who had been killed in an World War II air crash. Bogart had another great success with 'To Have and To Have Not' and he was offered a remarkably generous contract by Warners of $1million a year. He made 3 further movies with Lauren Bacall including 'The Big Sleep' in 1946 and 'Key Largo' in 1948 and also in 1948 he and John Huston made 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre'. His portrayal of the distinctly unheroic prospector, Fred C. Dobbs was one of his finest performances but he topped it in 1950 with 'In a Lonely Place', in which he gave a masterly acting performance displaying rage and violent self-loathing. The movie was made by Bogart's own production company, Santana Productions, named after his private yacht.

Bogart gave another superb performance in 'The African Queen' in 1951, for which he won his Academy Award for Best Actor. He co-starred with Katharine Hepburn and again he was directed by John Huston who seemed to have the knack of getting the best out of him. Final Years He continued to play a variety of character roles such as Captain Queeg in 'The Caine Mutiny' (for which he received his third Best Actor Academy Award nomination), a film director in 'The Barefoot Contessa', and a businessman in the Billy Wilder comedy 'Sabrina'. His final films were made when he was fighting increasing ill-health and were disappointing: 'We're No Angels', 'The Desperate Hours', and 'The Left Hand of God' all in 1955, and the drama about boxing, 'The Harder They Fall' in 1956. By this time Bogart's lifetime of heavy drinking and smoking had caught up with him. He was seriously ill with cancer of the oesophagus. After several unsuccessful operations, Humphrey Bogart died at his Hollywood home on January 14, 1957 aged 57 years.

After cremation his remains were buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Summary Although Bogart died over half a century ago, his appeal has been increasing over the years, unlike many of his contemporaries. He is revered of course for his acting talent and for his catalogue of great roles in classic movies but he is also remembered with great affection for his personal qualities. He was, in a quite uncomplicated way a normal human being, a drinking man, a smoker and a loving husband and father, and he simply oozed "cool". He was a mass of contradictions which made him an object of fascination: a cynic who was also romantic, a tough guy who was also sensitive. He cleverly created his movie persona and it his lasting legacy. We should be very grateful. Humphrey Bogart Academy Awards Film Notes -The African Queen The African Queen (American, 1951, 105 minutes, color, 35mm) Directed by John Huston Robert Morley . . . . . . Reverend Samuel Sayer Peter Bull . . . . . . . . . .

Captain of Louisa The following film notes were prepared for the New York State Writers Institute by Kevin Jack Hagopian, Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Pennsylvania State University: The story of Charlie Allnut and Rose Sayer appealed to John Huston instantly. C. S. Forester’s tale of a mismatched couple, the convict and the missionary lady, centered on one of the best colorfully conflicted duos in Huston films. The leads were first to have been played by Charles Laughton and his wife, Elsa Lanchester, and then by Bette Davis and David Niven. But Katherine Hepburn, then finishing a national tour of As You Like It for the Theatre Guild, loved the book, and saw in Rosie a woman much like herself—a prim-seeming product of a starched society with vast, hidden reserves of unorthodoxy and bravery. She’d never met Humphrey Bogart or director John Huston, but she admired both of them. She agreed to do the film on one condition—that the film would actually be shot in its setting, equatorial Africa. Renegade independent producer Sam Spiegel knew that Hepburn was the only Rosie in the world, and he gulped and agreed.

No one could have known the agonies that awaited them, agonies that made everyone feel remarkably close to the world of Rosie and Charlie. Shipping a whole movie company thousands of miles across the world and into the African bush greatly appealed to director Huston, who, after the experience of THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE’s Mexican locations, was even more eager to use extensive location work in this film. He flew over 25,000 miles of African terrain before choosing a camp near Biondo, on the Ruiki River in what was then the Belgian Congo. Not only did the realism of the African location for this particular story appeal to Huston, but so did the end-of-the world feel: "I come from a frontier background. My people were that. And I always feel constrained in the presence of too many rules, severe rules; they distress me. I like the sense of freedom. I don't particularly seek that ultimate freedom of the anarchist, but I'm impatient of rules that result from prejudice." Throughout his life, Huston took any excuse to light out for the territories. The god-forsaken Congo was the perfect place to make a film about how quickly the cheap paint of civilization can wear off the human psyche.

For the rest of THE AFRICAN QUEEN cast and crew, it was a green hell. Spiegel had gone deeply in hock to make the film with the cast he wanted, and there was precious little left over for a huge location crew. For a time, Hepburn doubled as the wardrobe mistress. Missing from the African set were the squadrons of grips, gophers, and hangers-on common to a Hollywood shoot. In their place were bemused natives, lumber camp laborers, and the occasional colonial administrator. "Nature," says Hepburn’s Rose Sayer in the film, "is what we were put on earth to rise above." But THE AFRICAN QUEEN group kept most intimate company with nature for the long weeks on African location, close by the black water of the Riuki in the rainy season. The cast endured blood flukes, crocodiles, huge army ants, wild boars, elephant stampedes, malaria and dysentery. Poisonous snakes in the outhouses and bugs in the food added even more character to the steaming inferno, and Hepburn lost twenty pounds making the film.

Sanitation was nonexistent, a particular horror for Hepburn, fastidious to a fault and a urologist’s daughter. Bogart and Huston took to consuming Homeric amounts of alcohol, as the jungle closed in about them. Bogart’s own self-reliance and confidence initially made him despise the chinless Charlie Allnut. But the weeks in the jungle worked a change on Bogart, as he sampled the destitute life of Charlie. As Huston said, "All at once he got under the skin of that wretched, sleazy, absurd, brave little man." Hepburn became angry with Huston and Bogart, and berated them for their endless practical jokes at her expense, including obscenities written in soap on her mirror. "She thought we were rascals, scamps, and rogues," said Huston, with a smile, many years later. Of course, she was right. "But eventually she saw through our antics and learned to trust us as friends." Hepburn developed a respect for Huston as a true ‘actor’s director,’ who gave her the key to Rose Sayer when he advised her to play the role like Eleanor Roosevelt.

"That is the goddamnedest best piece of direction I have ever heard," wrote Hepburn, and their friendship was sealed. For Hepburn, the role of Rose, "the skinny, psalm-singing old maid" who discovers a reservoir of strength and very earthly affection for one completely unlike herself, was art imitating life, complete with tsetse fly bites and leech infestations. She came to regard the shoot as one of the great adventures of her life, immortalizing it in a 1987 book with the absolutely accurate title The Making of The African Queen or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind. The AFRICAN QUEEN shoot, like the search for Scarlet O’Hara, or Darryl F. Zanuck chasing starlets around his desk, is now part of Hollywood lore. Clint Eastwood’s 1990 film WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART is loosely based on the Huston of THE AFRICAN QUEEN, from a novel by Peter Viertel, one of THE AFRICAN QUEEN’s screenwriters.

THE AFRICAN QUEEN shoot turned out to be a truly Hemingwayesque experience for the Bogarts, Huston, and Katherine Hepburn, perhaps "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber" mixed with an equal measure of The Green Hills of Africa. But not really, for THE AFRICAN QUEEN affirms the primacy of romance and trust over the worst obstacles of nature and human nature. Hepburn captured the essential joy of THE AFRICAN QUEEN in a mental snapshot from the film: "Dear Bogie. I'll never forget that close-up of him after he kisses Rosie, then goes around in back of the tank and considers what has happened. His expression—the wonder of it all—life." — Kevin Hagopian, Penn State University For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at

Question: What was the name of the character played by Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen
Answer: Charlie Allnut